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Posts tagged DDOS
Conficker as a weapon for Cyber attack
Nov 4th
Conficker worm could be ‘weaponized,’ web security researcher warns
November 2, 2009
In the year since the inception of the Conficker worm, a malicious strain of virus that has infected computers all over the globe, security researchers have tracked its spread to as many as 7 million machines.
Although internet security researchers at the Conficker Working Group advise that it is impossible to track the exact number of PCs infected by Conficker, the latest estimates put the worm’s spread at around the 7 million mark, a milestone in the making of a huge botnet, according to Computerworld.
Botnets are controlled by hackers, cyber criminals or sometimes governments for the purpose of launching spam, malware and distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDOS), which can overpower website servers with malicious traffic that slows or crashes websites.
As an element of cyber war, DDOS attacks require a large enough botnet to overpower defenses, according to security experts. Andre DiMino, co-founder of The Shadowserver Foundation, said a botnet the size of Conficker could be “weaponized” in a cyber attack.
“This is certainly a botnet that could be weaponized,” DeMino said, according to Computerworld. “When you have a net of this magnitude, the sky’s the limit in terms of what could be done.”
DDOS attacks launched last July shut down government, banking and commercial sites in the U.S. and South Korea. Smaller attacks have hit sites like Twitter, Facebook and news websites.
CRIME ECONOMY : $30 will buy a one-day DDoS attack now
Oct 20th
With botnets everywhere, DDoS attacks get cheaper
By Robert McMillan ,
IDG News Service,
October 15, 2009
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/101509-with-botnets-everywhere-ddos-attacks.html?hpg1=bn
Cyber-crime just doesn’t pay like it used to.
Security researchers say the cost of criminal services such as distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks has dropped in recent months. The reason? Market economics. “The barriers to entry in that marketplace are so low you have people basically flooding the market,” said Jose Nazario, a security researcher with Arbor Networks. “The way you differentiate yourself is on price.”
Criminals have gotten better at hacking into unsuspecting computers and linking them together into so-called botnet networks, which can then be centrally controlled. Botnets are used to send spam, steal passwords, and sometimes to launch DDoS attacks, which flood victims’ servers with unwanted information. Often these networks are rented out as a kind of criminal software-as-a-service to third parties, who are typically recruited in online discussion boards.
DDoS attacks have been used to censor critics, take down rivals, wipe out online competitors and even extort money from legitimate businesses. Earlier this year a highly publicized DDoS attack targeted U.S. and South Korean servers, knocking a number of Web sites offline.
